Escaping the End of the World

Escaping the End of the World is Gary Brower’s first really big collection. It is long overdue and its mature voice engages us completely. This is the memoir of a man, but also of a time and place. The place is the American Midwest at the harrowing horizon of mid-20^th century. An era of lived poverty and scraping to get by. Brower sings to a culture of God, patriotism and family, from a distance that remembers and a present that refuses to “throw the baby out with the bathwater,” as he says in one of these spectacular poems.

—Margaret Randall, Author of She Becomes Time and About Little Charlie Lindbergh